96.9 Viking FM is the local radio station around these parts, it's the cool one for cool kids. You know how it is, there's the local BBC radio station (Radio Humberside) for sensible boring grownups and then there's the local commercial (does it for money) radio station that caters to young people who like more music and less talking. Radio Humberside is the one that Fr Massie appears on from time to time talking about religion.

When Viking FM (the cool one) wanted to do a feature on the Eurovision Song Contest do you think you got in touch with Fr Massie? Nope. They wanted somebody cool so they got in touch with me of course. They had been online looking for somebody to talk about Eurovision parties in Hull and they found my blog entry about our legendary Eurovision party (founded by Zosia in 2005 I think). They invited us in to the studio to talk about it but alas, Ella was supposed to be having a baby (no news yet) so we declined. This years Eurovision party is cancelled.

Ella and I are watching Eurovision alone this year (as alone as you can be with a toddler and an unborn child) and wondering if any of the nations will have a song to trigger the arrival of our new baby.

Update: They haven't finished counting the scores yet but man that was a poor year. Where was the fun?

Introduced by Zosia in 2004, the Eurovision Party has become a regular part of every year. The songs are rubbish, we always lose, but we have a good time. This year, we left our planning a bit late, we completely failed to realise that Eurovision was even happening until the day before... fortunately a few phone calls was all it took to round up some friends.

For those of you in America who may not be familiar. The Eurovision Network is an association of broadcasters who swap TV shows and news clips. Once a year they hold a song contest. It used to be taken very seriously when my parents were young but it's turned in to a bit of a joke.

The procedure is this.. countries submit songs, drippy girl songs, comedy songs, ballads etc. Then every country votes for the countries they like the most. England always loses. Winners from previous years have included Ukraine in 2004 with Wild Dancers and Finland in 2006 with Hard Rock Hallelujah.

This year, the song that should have won was was undoubtedly this one from Latvia...

But, alas, the pirates were robbed. We also quite liked this one from Croatia...

But, alas, the old men were robbed (despite the awesome playing of bottles). The offering from Bosnia was crazy as was the song from Spain. Fr Massie liked Denmark.

Subsequent YouTube searching revealed that we missed out on Bulgaria which never made it to the final and a comedy Turkey from Ireland resplendent with lines like "Eastern Europe we like you, do you like Irish stew?".

The final result? The UK came joint last alongside Poland. The winners were Russia with crap. As Terry Wogan said towards the end, it's not really a song contest anymore.

But was it ever?

Well, it worked so well back at University. We got to experience the true delights of Ruslana - Wild Dancers for the Ukraine and more recently Lordi - Hard Rock Halleuja for Finland. Some are surprised at my approval of the latter, apparently they are too demonic. I stand by Tolkein's suggestion that the Devil would "look fairer and seem fouler". Besides which, how demonic can you be and have a song called The Devil is a Loser?

This year Ella, Leona and I had Fr Massie, Richard Marsden, Michelle and Jessica around for a Eurovision party. Fr Massie hasn't sat and watched it for years, apparently they used to take it seriously in the olden days and now they can't stand it anymore. It made me aware of a significant dividing line on the great generational divide, the line of enjoying things ironically. Our grandparents and parents generation never had to learn to enjoy something for it's crapness. Perhaps in spite of, but never for the sake of.

This year was awful. No wild dancing, no wings, no fire, just a man with boobs and a star on his head. Now that's demonic (though whether it's fairer is up for debate). Nothing really memorable at all. Gutted.

I don't know if the United Kingdom deserved to win but for once we at least we deserved to come, oh I don't know, tenth or something. We came 22nd ahead of only France (at least we beat them) and Ireland. The only people to vote for us was Ireland and Malta. Yay Malta. How is Rachel these days? On again... Off again perhaps?

Et tu Poland?